ELIZABETHTOWN — Back-to-back meetings of the Harmony Hall Plantation Village and Bladen County Historical Society groups on Thursday ended with a number of resignations from both groups.
The meetings, held at the Elizabethtown Municipal Building, was reportedly heated almost from the start and sparked the resignation of Bobby Lewis and Seth Lewis. The resignation of Tony Parnell from the groups is also pending.
“We’re just tired of fighting people who have their own personal agendas,” Bobby Lewis said Friday morning. He didn’t want to go into much more detail.
“It’s disappointing, because there have been some good things happening over the past few years,” he added. “Seth has been doing this for something like 30 years and I’ve been involved for about six, so it’s disappointing.”
The contentious nature between the Harmony Hall committee and some of the Historical Society membership dates back years, but seemed to come to a head in 2015 when the two groups decided to become separate entities.
Now, the future and direction of both organizations is again in question.
Left up in the air are such issues as the renaming of the new Tar Heel Ferry Road bridge, the weekly Sunday events at Harmony Hall Plantation Village and the annual two-day Battle of Elizabethtown at Tory Hole Park.
The Bladen Journal will be working on a more in-depth story about the resignations and future of the two groups.